


scrambling around

by lady-serendipity (JenZz)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Marching Band, American Football, College Football, Everyone Is Gay, Fluff and Crack, M/M, Marching Band, Multi, OT12 (EXO), Scramble Band, it's only PG for now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24332965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenZz/pseuds/lady-serendipity
Summary: This is the SM Uuuuuuniversity Band! Where "bandcest" is par for the course and silly things happen. We might even be superheros but probably not. Poor freshmen Sehun and Jongin have no idea what they've just signed up for.The ot12 college "marching" band!au that literally no one asked for, but well if it's easy to write what you know then here you go. You'll find out what scrambling around means soon enough. Also - it's American football hahaha I'll see how much I explain XD
Relationships: Byun Baekhyun/Do Kyungsoo | D.O, Do Kyungsoo | D.O/Park Chanyeol, Huang Zi Tao | Z.Tao/Oh Sehun, Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Junmyeon | Suho, Kim Minseok | Xiumin/Lu Han, Wu Yi Fan | Kris/Zhang Yi Xing | Lay
Comments: 14
Kudos: 16





	scrambling around

**Author's Note:**

> A little side note - I was working on this with someone but they abandoned the project. Now I've rewritten it so it is solely my own work. I hope you all enjoy!

Sehun never realized how much dismay and confusion he would feel when a flying pig whacks the side of his face. Someone shrieks in glee as they dive for the stuffed animal, and Sehun doesn’t get to see where it goes before he’s ducking again to dodge a flying duck.

Yes. Sehun was definitely not and never would’ve been prepared for this.

The evening had started off fine. After seeing signs around campus advertising an open rehearsal for the SM University’s “Scramble” Band, he had decided to give it a chance. While not a particularly devoted musician, Sehun had enjoyed performing with his high school band. College couldn’t be too different, right?

More importantly, he needed to join a club so he could make some real friends. It's been a week into his freshman year and the only person he’d talked with was his overly friendly RA. Sehun cursed his crippling shyness, watching everyone else quickly fall into social circles of their own. Maybe marching band would help him open up.

It was easy enough finding the rehearsal location. The sounds of distant drums and the blaring of brass instruments grew louder as he approached what must be the music building, Elyxion. 

The gravel crunched under his feet when he drew to a stop. A garishly colored black and pink plaid van was surrounded by a veritable swarm of people. Students enthusiastically hugged each other and maybe even picked up one of the instrument cases being flung on the ground by four people unloading the van.

Sehun was suddenly frozen in his tracks, unsure of how he might fit in or if he should even be there. Before he could turn tail and run, one of the people unloading the van spotted him. 

“Hi I’m Jongdae! Are you here for the SM University Band?” Jongdae yelled, excitedly waving as he bulldozed a path to Sehun. 

“Yeah. I, um. Saw the, uh. Signs.” Sehun blushed, wanting to curl up and die. He sounded so stupid, this was definitely a bad idea—

“Oh!! Great, I’m glad those worked. Did you see the pantsless versions? Those were my idea!” Jongdae chirped in response. He clasped an arm around Sehun’s and dragged him over. For a person shorter and somehow skinnier than Sehun, he certainly had enough confidence to make up for it. “I’m one of the officers. And what’s your name?”

“Sehun,” he managed to reply over the din of the nearby people. “Um, how does this work?”

“Ah, you’ve asked the right person!! Ignore all of this, we don’t expect you to be like this right away,” Jongdae said, waving at the chaos of milling students. Everyone seemed chatty and almost violently affectionate and he was struck again with the feeling that maybe this was the wrong place for him. Sehun watched, horrified and fascinated, as one of the officers stopped unloading the van to put another officer in a chokehold. “What instrument do you play?”

His attention snapped back to a beaming Jongdae and he couldn't help but timidly smile back. “The… flute.”

“Damn! You’ll be with Baekhyun then, in the flumpets.” Jongdae turned around to holler, “Baek—yah, hey! We still need Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, let go of him.” Kyungsoo reluctantly released Chanyeol, who sprang up as if nothing had happened and clambered elsewhere. “Baek, where the fuck—”

“Here!” Baekhyun screamed, jumping on Jongdae from behind. Did no one have an indoor voice here? Granted, they were outside...

“Fuck, you fuckin’ scared me,” Jongdae yelled before gently setting Baekhyun down. “I’ve got a new frosh for you. But if you ever want to switch to drums, I’m your man again.” Jongdae disappeared.

Baekhyun reached a hand out and Sehun clasped it, shaking it. “I’m Baekhyun, your DM. You play flute or trumpet?” Sehun repeated himself and was handed a slightly battered-looking case. “Take care of Shrieker,” Baekhyun said solemnly.

“I… will?” Sehun wheezed. He gingerly held the duct-tape covered case, The Shrieker scrawled on it.

“Lovely! The band provides everything you need to perform with us, so if you need anything just holler.” Sehun nodded, and Baekhyun beamed at him. God, Sehun was beginning to wonder if everyone had drunk a Red Bull or something before practice. “Cool, now follow the crowd to get to the rehearsal room. Rehearsal's starting.” Baekhyun pointed at the door of the music building, through which Chanyeol and Jongdae were herding students.

“Thanks Baekhyun.” Sehun still felt slightly awkward in the face of Baekhyun’s friendliness. He wasn’t sure how to react to a perfect stranger treating him like their long lost best friend. 

“Don’t worry about it,” replied Baekhyun, already turning to intercept another lost lamb. Sehun let out a sigh of relief. He wasn’t the only new one, at least.

Sehun quietly followed the stream of students down a set of stairs into the basement practice room, where he found what could only be described as anarchy. If Sehun had thought that the students outside were rowdy, the practice room was practically a mosh pit.

A few students were quietly assembling and warming up their instruments, but they were in the minority. Several people were running around, welcoming friends back from the long summer and swapping stories of how they had spent the break. A few others were playing catch with each other from different corners, but instead of using a ball they threw stuffed animals. 

As Sehun observed, people ducked and swerved around the flying objects without comment, as if such actions were simply to be expected. And finally, there was a person at the board "editing" the list of the rehearsal songs (Call Me Baby to Call Me Daddy-o).

He spotted a flute player at the front row of seats and huffed a sigh of relief. At least there was the typical layout of music stands and seats. Maybe he should lower his expectations.

His spirits fell when he found that the flautist was actually fast asleep. In the midst of all this chaos. Sehun frowned, unsure what to do. “Don’t worry about him, Yixing’s just constantly sleep-deprived,” a voice called over to him. Startled, Sehun looked over to his left and locked eyes with a gorgeous girl with long flowing brown hair, holding a mellophone. “Hi, I’m Soojung. Nice to meet you.”

“I’m Sehun. Is it okay for me to sit down?” 

“Of course, go ahead and take this empty seat in front of me. I’ll help you get oriented.” She grinned. “I’m only a sophomore, so I remember how scary this all was for a quieter person. You get used to it.”

Sehun smiled back, feeling better. This might be the place for him to build up his confidence, then. “It does seem like a lot. I wasn’t sure if I should stay or not but…” he held up the flute case.

Soojung laughed, tossing her hair. “Ah, I see you inherited The Shrieker! Baek must’ve taken a liking to you, it belonged to his favorite person last year.” She watched him sit down and start to put the flute together. “This might look insane but give it a few weeks and it’ll start to feel like home. Or you run away screaming.”

“That’s so reassuring,” Sehun replied dryly, and Soojung only laughed harder.

Sehun had just finished putting together his flute when the scared-looking freshman from upstairs rushed to the open seat next to Sehun. He was clutching a clarinet case and flashed them a nervous smile. “Hi, I’m Jongin.”

“Hi Jongin,” Soojung waved at him. Jongin’s tiny wave back makes Sehun feel infinitely better that he’s not the only intimidated freshman. “I’m Soojung and this is Sehun. He’s a freshman like you! Oh, I think we’re about to start.”

Sehun was about to ask her how she knew before she shook her head and pointed her chin forwards. He turned around to the front to see a tall man with dyed blonde hair and sharp eyebrows step up to the conductor’s podium. 

Ah, this was something he knew. Sehun focused on the conductor, as his high school training had taught him. It had been drilled in his head countless times by his band director that when the conductor was at the platform the musicians stopped talking and listened. However, the rest of the band didn’t seem to share Sehun’s sense of decorum, as the majority of students continued to loudly chat with each other. 

The conductor surveyed the students in front of him for a minute before he cleared his throat and bellowed, “YoooooOOOOOO Band!”

Sehun jumped in surprise and then did a double take as almost everyone replied with “Yoooo Kris” and fell silent. Was this some sort of cue?

A beat after everyone else, one of the standing clarinets called out, “Yooo Wu Yifan!” 

Kris leveled a glare at the clarinetist. “I don’t need this sass from you Lu Han, you’re supposed to be on my side,” he said almost petulantly. Sehun suddenly realized that Kris must be a student too.

Lu Han smirked at Kris, face unrepentant. Before he could continue, he was elbowed in the stomach by an alto sax player before being dragged to sit next to Jongin in the front.

“Hawt,” wolf-whistled someone behind Sehun.

On the podium, Kris continued his spiel once most people were seated. “First, welcome to the SM University Band, or SMUB for short! My name’s Kris and I’m the Student Conductor. I’m in charge of music and making you guys sound good.”

“What happens in rehearsal is that I write down the list of music we’ll play.” Kris points at the board before sighing. “Or, it’ll be up here once I fix these. Hopefully it should be easy to follow along. If you don’t have the music, shout ‘libe’ at the top of your lungs. That’ll call our luscious librarians Tao and Soojung over to you with music! We’ll start off with Call Me Baby.”

As soon as Kris finished, the room was filled with the shouts of students enthusiastically screaming, “LIBE!” 

Soojung stood up with a wink at Sehun and Jongin, and grabbed the black duffel bag resting by the foot of her chair. After pulling out a stack of paper, she handed half to Tao and walked back up front to give Sehun and Jongin small squares of sheet music. The shouting ended after a few minutes. 

To Sehun’s surprise and definite relief, they started to play music. This part, he was familiar with. Yixing had woken up at some point and introduced himself. Kris had some sections work on specific musical phrases, and Sehun zoned out while it was the trumpet’s turn.

Big mistake, he realizes when he gets whacked in the face with a stuffed animal. Jongin bursts into high-pitched giggles as Sehun scowls at the offending stuffed pig on the floor. What the fuck? Sehun squeezes his eyes closed as if that would save him as he ducks again to narrowly dodge a flying duck. “What is happening?” he mutters.

“Sorry,” Soojung says, not sounding that sorry. “Kris is a popular target.” 

The trumpets have stopped playing. When Sehun turns to see what’s happening, Baekhyun stands on his chair with the pig and cries, “Stop harassing my cute frosh!” Sehun blushes as people turn to grin at him. Baekhyun continues, ”Kris isn’t the best target, everyone knows who you should really be throwing this at!” Flinging the toy, he crows with delight when it sinks into Chanyeol’s tuba.

“Ah, fuck you Baek,” Chanyeol whines as he contorts his body in an attempt to fish out the stuffed animal without taking the tuba off.

“Keep it in the bedroom please, DMs,” Kris says mildly before turning to the flutes. Sehun jumps to attention as he listens to Kris’s request and plays. He flushes with delight when Kris praises his musicality, but jumps when Yixing side-hugs him out of nowhere. Sehun has a sneaking suspicion that everyone in this Band is touchy.

After the fifth piece, Kris announces, “That’s all I have for tonight. Now it’s time for a SHOW! SHOW!” 

“SHOW! SHOW!” the entire band continues the chant, like a crazy cult. Some students stomp or clap, to add to the clamor. Sehun and Jongin look around, bewildered and honestly a little scared. 

Lu Han saunters to the podium, leaving his clarinet behind. He preens under the attention and when the duck flies at his face he deftly whacks it away.

“Yoooo Band!” he trills. The students chorus, “Yoooo Lu Han!” back at him, Sehun and Jongin joining in this time.

Lu Han strikes a silly pose, one hand touching his face and the other stretched up high as if holding something. “For the frosh, I’m Lu Han, the Drum Major. I’m in charge of writing field shows for our football game halftimes, designing the formations, and arranging gigs outside of our athletics. I also decide where the march-arounds go, and finally am in charge of awesome dancing.” 

Loud coughing noises ensue, which Lu Han ignores. “For the shows, I draw inspiration from Monday show-writing. Everyone who wants to participate can come and shout ideas at me. I’d love to see you all there, especially you cute frosh!” Lu Han winks at Jongin, who looks like he wants to shrink into his seat. “But enough of my beautiful presence. Let's get SUSHI!” 

As one, Lu Han and the rest of the band start chanting again, only rather than shouting “show” it's “SUSHI! SUSHI!” 

Sehun cranes his neck to the back, gaze following a boy emerging from a bass drum to walk up to the podium. “Yooo Band!”

“Yooo Suho!” Some people accompany their shouts with air-kisses and heart guns, which “Suho” happily returns.

“I’m Junmyeon, the Head Manager. But the Band calls me Suho. As HM, I’m in charge of clothing and feeding you. Though not sushi, it’s out of my budget.”

“We’ll get you to buy us some soon Junma!” Chanyeol whoops from the back of the room, and others chorus their agreement. 

“As I was saying, the uniform consists of the jacket, hat, white shirt, pink or black tie, white or black shoes, and black pants.” Junmyeon heaves a heavy sigh before continuing, “I wish I didn’t have to specify this, but when you show up for the game, the pants are supposed to be on your legs. Please. They are not to be wrapped around your neck like a demented scarf, Jongdae.”

In the back, Jongdae lounges back from his bells and grins innocently at Junmyeon.

“What happens if I show up with my pants on but they always seem to mysteriously come off? I think they might be jinxed,” says Soojung. Though Soojung had claimed she was quiet, Sehun couldn’t imagine himself ever being so brash. 

Before Junmyeon can respond, Baekhyun jumps in with, “Me too! I don’t know why it keeps on happening. I don’t think I can control the way my pants keep slipping off!”

“You’d better control your pants,” Kyungsoo says, “or I’ll strangle you with them.” 

“Yoooooo Band!” Junmyeon repeats, clearly exasperated from the multiple interruptions. When everyone finally quiets down, he ruefully shakes his head before continuing, “I’ll be at the upstairs Req Room the hour before the game for people to pick up the jacket and for frosh to get a new hat. If you don’t have any of the other uniform parts, come by before call time to get what you need, we’ve always got extra. If you don’t wear pants, we’ll GET MINSEOK ARRESTED!”

Once again, the band takes to the chant with manic enthusiasm. This time, it’s the alto sax player who had elbowed Lu Han before who gets up. He nimbly jumps over the foot Lu Han sticks out to make his way to the podium. 

“Hey everyone! I’m Minseok and it’s an honor to be your president. The most important part of my job is that if the band ever does something extraordinarily stupid, then I’m the one who gets in trouble. So please, don’t get me arrested.”

The chant of “Get Minseok arrested!” starts up again, but is much less raucous than before and quickly silenced as Minseok continues. Sehun is impressed by the way he commands the attention of the room, despite looking younger than Sehun himself. “We have a lot of new faces here - welcome, don’t hesitate to ask me any questions or shoot me an email.” Minseok shrugs. “Other than being the scapegoat for getting arrested, my main job is pretty much answering email.”

“Aw, you do so much more than that my darling Baozi!” Lu Han cries.

“No need to get into detail, dear. Anyway, the other officers we have are our librarians, which you’ve met already, and our Treasurer is the lovely Amber.” A tomboy with a snapback waves lazily from her chair in the trombone section, and winks at Sehun when she notices him gawking. “She deals with money. Mostly keeping the credit card away from Chanyeol—” 

“HEY!” 

“—and convincing university administration that the band is really into making lemon margarita mix cookies.”

Minseok pauses as the room breaks out into knowing chuckles. Amber sends an annoyed look in Jongdae’s direction, who throws his hands up in the air. “Honest mistakes have been made!” 

When the noise dies down, Minseok says, “Lastly, keep an eye on your inboxes - we’ll be emailing out schedule info. Frosh, make sure you sign up so you get on the right mailing lists. That’s it for this week, which is super LAAAAAME!”

The repeated shouts of ‘LAME’ hit a new crescendo as Baekhyun, Chanyeol, Jongdae, and Kyungsoo sprint to the front of the room. All four try to clamber onto the conductor podium at the same time. After some friendly pushing and shoving they all manage to fit: Kyungsoo in the middle, Baekhyun and Jongdae flanking him, and Chanyeol towering behind. 

All four begin to snap their fingers. Kyungsoo closes his eyes and sings, “Oh whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh.” Baekhyun joins on the second beat, and Jongdae the third, with Chanyeol joining as the bass line. In the tune of Justin Bieber’s _Baby_ :

_“You know you love band, I know you care,_  
_Just shout D-M, and we’ll be there,_  
_We’ve got new babies, we’ve got instruments,_  
_And we would never ever ever be apart_

_“And I was like…_

_“Baby, baby, baby froooosh_  
_Like baby, baby, baby froooosh_  
_Like baby, baby, baby froooosh_  
_Won’t you always stay in Band? (Band!)_

“WELCOME FROSH!”

“LAAAAAAME!” the band yells back in unison. Sehun cringes so hard, but also can’t help but smile. It’s lame but still nice to be welcomed with such enthusiasm.

Baekhyun, with an arm around Kyungsoo, swings forward to say, “We’re the DMs, which stands for Drill Masters! We’re basically a mix between a section leader and social chairs. We fetch alllll your instruments for you, so you better be nice to us!” Flashing a V sign, he continues, “I’m the flumpet DM, the best section ever! I have flutes, trumpets, and any other high-pitched instrument. Love you guys!” Yixing and Sehun wave back while the trumpets howl in response.

Kyungsoo shrugs off Baekhyun’s arm before announcing, “I’m the saxinet DM, in charge of saxes and clarinets.” Minseok and Lu Han loudly cheer while Jongin hesitantly hollers along, eliciting a blinding smile from Kyungsoo. Jongin quickly redirects his gaze to the floor, tanned cheeks reddening with embarrassment. _Ah ha_ , Sehun thinks. _Someone’s got a crush._

Chanyeol booms, “I’m the tubonerphone DM! We’ve got the low brass and are proud owners of the ass!” Amber jumps up and loudly slaps Soojung’s ass, making Sehun jump in surprise. 

Finally, Jongdae ends with, “And I’m garbussion DM! That stands for garbage and percussion. We like to hit things.” He body rolls and mimes slapping someone’s butt. Junmyeon buries his face in his hands while the other percussionists all smack their instruments or nearby neighbors with a cry of triumph.

Sehun briefly wonders why Jongdae would refer to his own section as garbage. His focus is dragged back to the front as all four DMs take a deep breath and screech at the top of their lungs: “SCHEDULE! TUESDAY 7 PM OPEN REHEARSAL AT ELYXION!”

Soojung and the rest of the band stand up and roar: “BE THERE!” startling Sehun just when he had thought he’d seen it all.

Without blinking, used to being bellowed at by over twenty people, the DMs continue, “THURSDAY, 9 PM, FIELD REHEARSAL AT THE REQ ROOM—” 

“BE THERE!” comes the thundering call for a second time. When Sehun can finally process the times, he figures he should be able to make everything this week.

After finishing the schedule, Sehun blinks as everyone simply starts to put their instruments away. Rather than passing the podium to someone else, the DMs start chirping, “Pooop! Pooooop!” and handing out sheets of paper. 

Sehun’s one of the first, being in the front with the flutes. It’s a single sheet of paper titled POOP. “The poop is our newsletter,” Yixing explains. Under the header are some unappealing edits of each of the officer corps as Boohbahs. Sehun hears someone begin to loudly complain about the obviously bad Photoshop jobs.

Next to him, Jongin lets out a high-pitched giggle. Glancing over, Sehun notices Jongin had flipped the page over and is looking at a section titled, “Like Ooh-ahh.” Looking more closely at the quotes beneath, Sehun begins to chuckle too.

_Kris: “Just keep watching me, it’s my job to give it to you.”_  
_Lu Han: “I’ve played Minseok’s reed for the last couple of months.”_  
_Amber: “I’ve been paying for this all night by lying on the ground.”_  
_Tao: “Put it in! I told you to put it in!”_  
_Minseok: “Is it hard?” Lu Han: “No.” Minseok: “I guess it is too early in the morning.”_  
_Kris: “This stick is really sticky and it’s uncomfortable.”_  
_Yixing: “I feel like I should have been less surprised when everything turned very sticky.”_  
_Minseok (to Lu Han): “Yours is really big.”_

At the very bottom of the page:

**POOP OF THE WEEK:**  
_Lu Han: “I like how it kind of flails as it reaches maximum size. It also explodes if you hold it too long!”_

Soojung stretches, hefting up her mellophone. “You guys should watch your words or you’ll end up on the poop next week.”

“How does it work?” Jongin asks, putting his poop away and reaching for his case.

“Well, if you say anything that could be—”

“Very poorly interpreted,” inserts Baekhyun as he walks by, picking up Sehun and Jongin’s music stands to put them in the closet. He pretends to use both to trap Kyungsoo, who very pointedly slaps him out of his way.

Soojung continues, “Yeah, and another bandie hears you, the quote is texted to the DMs and you end up on the poop.” She’s about to walk away when she doubles back. “Oh! And when you’re done packing, find me or Tao on Thursday and we’ll give you your music packets!”

“Yes ma’am,” Sehun and Jongin chorus. Soojung rolls her eyes at them before walking away. 

“That was certainly something,” Sehun tries. He really wants to get along with Jongin. Newbies need to stick together. 

“I completely agree,” Jongin says, smiling shyly. Together, they climb up the stairs and back to the plaid van. While Jongin goes to Kyungsoo, Sehun approaches Baekhyun.

“How was your first rehearsal? Not too overwhelming, I hope,” Baekhyun asks.

Sehun shakes his head. “It was kind of scary but it ended up being okay. I’ll come to Thursday’s field rehearsal.” 

“Oh wonderful!” a third voice interjects. “By the way, nice to meet you. I’m Lu Han. What’s your name?”

“S-Sehun,” Sehun stammers when Lu Han shoves his face into his own. 

Lu Han’s grin widens almost maniacally. “Do you happen to have the unlimited meal plan?”

“Yes?” Sehun squeaks in reply and Lu Han lets out a jubilant cry. He starts to drag Sehun down the path to the Commons, chattering something about being Sehun’s starving new best friend.

“Do try to not scare him off,” Baekhyun calls after them, “I’d save you from him Sehun but I think Kyungsoo might actually cut my balls off so… welcome and good luck!” 

Well... at least Sehun has friends now?

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments much appreciated! Also accepting constructive criticism :)
> 
> You can yell at me on [Tumblr](http://lady-serendipity.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ladyyserendipit) <3!


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